I stared at him with unconcealed dismay. In an instant it flashed into anger. “Why didn’t you tell me of the King’s condition?”

He considered another scroll, after a moment set it in the pile to his right. “But I did. A question in exchange for yours: why didn’t you already know of it?”

That set me back. “I admit I’ve been lax in calling upon him. But—”

“None of my words could have had the impact of seeing for yourself. Nor do you pause to think what it would have been like had I not been there every single day, emptying chamber pots, sweeping, dusting, carrying out dishes, combing his hair and his beard….”

Again he had shocked me into silence. I crossed the room, sat down heavily atop my clothing chest. “He’s not the King I remember,” I said bluntly. “It frightens me that he could sink so far, so fast.”

“Frightens you? Appalls me. At least you’ve another King when this one’s been played.” The Fool flipped another scroll onto the pile.

“We all do,” I pointed out carefully.

“Some more than others,” the Fool said shortly.

Without thinking, my hand rose to tuck the pin tighter in my jerkin. I’d almost lost it today. It had made me think of all it had symbolized all these years. The King’s protection, for a bastard grandson that a more ruthless man would have done away with quietly. And now that he needed protection? What did it symbolize to me now?

“So. What do we do?”

“You and I? Precious little. I’m but a Fool, and you are a bastard.”

I nodded grudgingly. “I wish Chade were here. I wish I knew when he was coming back.” I looked to the Fool, wondering how much he knew.

“Shade? Shade returns when the sun does, I’ve heard.” Evasive as always. “Too late for the King, I imagine,” he added more quietly.

“So we are powerless?”

“You and I? Never. We’ve too much power to act here; that is all. In this area, the powerless ones are always the most powerful. Perhaps you are right; they are who we should consult in this. And now …” Here he rose and made a show of shaking all his joints loose as if he were a marionette with tangled strings. He set every bell he had to jingling. I could not help but smile. “My king will be coming into his best time of day. And I will be there, to do what little I can for him.”

He stepped carefully out of his ring of sorted scrolls and tablets. He yawned. “Farewell, Fitz.”

“Farewell.”

He halted, puzzled, by the door. “You have no objections to my going?”

“I believe I objected first to your staying.”

“Never bandy words with a Fool. But do you forget? I offered you a bargain. A secret for a secret.”

I had not forgotten. But I was not sure, suddenly, that I wanted to know. “Whence comes the Fool, and why?” I asked softly.

“Ah.” He stood a moment, then asked gravely, “You are certain you wish the answers to these questions?”

“Whence comes the Fool, and why?” I repeated slowly.

For an instant he was dumb. I saw him then. Saw him as I had not in years, not as the Fool, glib-tongued and wits as cutting as any barnacle, but as a small and slender person, all so fragile, pale flesh, bird-boned, even his hair seemed less substantial than that of other mortals. His motley of black and white trimmed in silver bells, his ridiculous rat scepter were all the armor and sword he had in this court of intrigues and treachery. And his mystery. The invisible cloak of his mystery. I wished for an instant he had not offered the bargain, and that my curiosity had been less consuming.

He sighed. He glanced about my room, then walked over to stand before the tapestry of King Wisdom greeting the Elderling. He glanced up at it, then smiled sourly, finding some humor there I had never seen. He assumed the stance of a poet about to recite. Then he halted, looked at me squarely once more. “You are certain you wish to know, Fitzy-fitz?”

Like a liturgy, I repeated the question. “Whence comes the Fool and why?”

“Whence? Ah, whence?” He went nose to nose with Ratsy for a moment, formulating a reply to his own question. Then he met my eyes. “Go south, Fitz. To lands past the edges of every map that Verity has ever seen. And past the edges of the maps made in those countries as well. Go south, and then east across a sea you have no name for. Eventually, you would come to a long peninsula, and on its snaking tip you would find the village where a Fool was born. You might even find, still, a mother who recalled her wormy-white babe, and how she cradled me against her warm breast and sang.” He glanced up at my incredulous, enraptured face and gave a short laugh. “You cannot even picture it, can you? Let me make it harder for you. Her hair was long and dark and curling, and her eyes were green. Fancy that! Of such rich colors was this transparency made. And the fathers of the colorless child? Two cousins, for that was the custom of that land. One broad and swarthy and full of laughter, ruddy-lipped and brown-eyed, a farmer smelling of rich earth and open air. The other as narrow as the one was wide, and gold to his bronze, a poet and songster, blue-eyed. And, oh, how they loved me and rejoiced in me! All the three of them, and the village as well. I was so loved.” His voice grew soft, and for a moment he fell silent. I knew with great certainty that I was hearing what no other had ever heard from him. I remembered the time I had ventured into his room, and the exquisite little doll in its cradle that I had found there. Cherished as the Fool had once been cherished. I waited.